Cardio and Your Heart!

Understanding the benefits of doing cardio is the first step to making a change!

“I’m good, I don’t need to do cardio.” “I don’t like doing Cardio.” “Cardio is boring.”

If phrases like this exist in your vernacular, it is time to listen to just one fact:

Heart Disease is the LEADING cause of death in both men and women.– Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Without considering factors you cannot control like age, gender, and family history, let’s look at some of the influencers that you CAN control. These include poor diet, being overweight, physical inactivity, and smoking. If anything on this list just gave you a small feeling of “I’m guilty of that” then it’s time to make a change. It’s not too late.

Your heart is a muscle and in order for it to stay strong, it NEEDS to be exercised. We exercise our heart and make it stronger by doing cardiovascular exercise. Performing regular cardio workouts can help circulate blood throughout your body more efficiently and strengthen your heart and lungs. This can include, walking, biking, jogging, running, swimming, rowing, stair climbing, elliptical training, and so much more.

It is recommended to perform 150 minutes of cardiovascular exercise each week. Some might say: “WHO has time for 150 minutes of exercise each week?” And the answer is, YOU DO! And if you don’t… You make time! An easy way to convince yourself to workout every week is to break it down into simple numbers.

There are 24 hours in a day, subtract 8 hours for sleep and we are left with 16 waking hours out of the day.

60 minutes in an hour x 16 hours = 960 minutes

There are 960 minutes in a day and 7 days in a week … 960 x 7 = 6,720 total waking minutes in a week

So given that we have over 6,000 waking minutes in our week it should be quite feasible to set aside 150 minutes out of those to give back to our bodies and more importantly, our hearts.

Here’s some math for you to use as a take away. 150 minutes / 7 days out of the week = 21.4 minutes each week. So, approximately 20 minutes a day of moderate cardiovascular exercise to combat the leading cause of death in both men and women.

It really is just that simple. The best part….. you might actually enjoy it!